Life after University for Engineering Graduates

Houshang Darabi; Elnaz Douzali; Fazle Shahnawaz Muhibul Karim; Samuel Thomas Harford; Hereford Johnson

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Conference: 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Location: Columbus, Ohio
Publication Date: June 24, 2017
Start Date: June 24, 2017
End Date: June 28, 2017
Conference Session: Life After Graduation
Tagged Division: Educational Research and Methods
Page Count: 17
DOI: 10.18260/1-2--28630
Permanent URL: https://peer.asee.org/28630
Download Count: 925

Paper Authors

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Houshang Darabi University of Illinois, Chicago orcid.org/0000-0001-7881-6542

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Dr. Houshang Darabi is an Associate Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Dr. Darabi has been the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of MIE since 2007. He has also served on the College of Engineering (COE) Educational Policy Committee since 2007. Dr. Darabi is the recipient of multiple teaching and advising awards including the COE Excellence in Teaching Award (2008, 2014), UIC Teaching Recognitions Award (2011), and the COE Best Advisor Award (2009, 2010, 2013). Dr. Darabi has been the Technical Chair for the UIC Annual Engineering Expo for the past 5 years. The Annual Engineering Expo is a COE’s flagship event where all senior students showcase their Design projects and products. More than 600 participants from public, industry and academia attend this event annually.

Dr. Darabi is an ABET IDEAL Scholar and has led the MIE Department ABET team in two successful accreditations (2008 and 2014) of Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering programs. Dr. Darabi has been the lead developer of several educational software systems as well as the author of multiple educational reports and papers. Some of these products/reports have already been launched/completed and are now in use. Others are in their development stages. Dr. Darabi’s research group uses Big Data, process mining, data mining, Operations Research, high performance computing, and visualization techniques to achieve its research and educational goals.

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Elnaz Douzali University of Illinois, Chicago

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Elnaz Douzali is a graduate student and researcher at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a part of the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department and will receive her Masters of Science degree in Industrial Engineering in May 2018. Her research interests include Educational Data Mining, Process Mining, and Healthcare.

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Fazle Shahnawaz Muhibul Karim University of Illinois, Chicago

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Fazle Karim is an aspiring data scientist who is completing his PhD in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department at University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his BSIE in 2012 from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. He is currently the lead data scientist at PROMINENT lab, the leading process mining research facility at the university. He has taught courses in Probability & Statistic in Engineering, Work Productivity Analysis, Quality Control & Reliability, and Safety Engineering. His research interest includes education data mining, health care data mining, and time series analysis.

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Samuel Thomas Harford University of Illinois, Chicago, PROMINENT Labs

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Samuel Harford is a graduate research assistant at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department. He received his BSIE in May 2016 from UIC and is currently pursuing his MS. Since 2015 he has done multiple projects in education data mining, some in collaboration with the Dean of Engineering. His research interests include healthcare and education data mining.

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Hereford Johnson University of Illinois, Chicago

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MS Candidate

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Abstract

Most Bachelors of Science in engineering programs curricula have a standard that covers main engineering skills in sciences, mathematics and design. Students are prepared through a rigorous curriculum. However, Universities fail to fully prepare students for aspects of their lives beyond the academic scope. While the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) requires student training in ethics, lifelong learning, communication, and working in multidisciplinary teams, students remain insufficiently prepared with skills that help overcome many challenges they face after leaving University. University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is a public research university registering greater than 20,000 students. One of the colleges at the University is the College of Engineering (COE). The Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) in the COE has modified its curriculum to include a course, which addresses essential life and career skills to its students in their final semester. The course addresses challenges ranging from how to deal with financial pressure, seeking career opportunities, time management, workplace etiquette, and other necessary skills. It consists of five different modules: Financial Planning, Effective Job Hunting, Accelerating Your Career, Learning Never Stops, and Entrepreneurship. Modules utilize methodologies from experiential learning theory to enhance student learning and contribute to the body of knowledge of teaching methods in STEM. An initial assessment was performed to measure the impact of this course and its modules. Metrics included the percentage of the cohort that was employed within six months of graduation versus the cohort that did not participate in the course. Additional metrics included a wide variety of surveys during and post course participation that provided qualitative insight on the courses performance. This paper illustrates the framework of the Professional Development Seminar for students of MIE at UIC. The effectiveness of this composition of modules continues to be studied. Initial results have shown evidence that participating seniors experience an increase in preparedness for post university life. The proposed framework has the potential to make an impact on any program in the United States by providing a course package that can be easily recreated. Locally, the success from this course has led to different engineering departments implementing courses into their curriculum that include one or more of our described modules.

Citation
Format

Darabi, H., & Douzali, E., & Karim, F. S. M., & Harford, S. T., & Johnson, H. (2017, June), Life after University for Engineering Graduates Paper presented at 2017 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition, Columbus, Ohio. 10.18260/1-2--28630

TY - CPAPER
AB - Most Bachelors of Science in engineering programs curricula have a standard that covers main engineering skills in sciences, mathematics and design. Students are prepared through a rigorous curriculum. However, Universities fail to fully prepare students for aspects of their lives beyond the academic scope. While the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) requires student training in ethics, lifelong learning, communication, and working in multidisciplinary teams, students remain insufficiently prepared with skills that help overcome many challenges they face after leaving University.
University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) is a public research university registering greater than 20,000 students. One of the colleges at the University is the College of Engineering (COE). The Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (MIE) in the COE has modified its curriculum to include a course, which addresses essential life and career skills to its students in their final semester. The course addresses challenges ranging from how to deal with financial pressure, seeking career opportunities, time management, workplace etiquette, and other necessary skills. It consists of five different modules: Financial Planning, Effective Job Hunting, Accelerating Your Career, Learning Never Stops, and Entrepreneurship. Modules utilize methodologies from experiential learning theory to enhance student learning and contribute to the body of knowledge of teaching methods in STEM.
An initial assessment was performed to measure the impact of this course and its modules. Metrics included the percentage of the cohort that was employed within six months of graduation versus the cohort that did not participate in the course. Additional metrics included a wide variety of surveys during and post course participation that provided qualitative insight on the courses performance.
This paper illustrates the framework of the Professional Development Seminar for students of MIE at UIC. The effectiveness of this composition of modules continues to be studied. Initial results have shown evidence that participating seniors experience an increase in preparedness for post university life. The proposed framework has the potential to make an impact on any program in the United States by providing a course package that can be easily recreated. Locally, the success from this course has led to different engineering departments implementing courses into their curriculum that include one or more of our described modules.

AU - Houshang Darabi
AU - Elnaz Douzali
AU - Fazle Shahnawaz Muhibul Karim
AU - Samuel Thomas Harford
AU - Hereford Johnson
CY - Columbus, Ohio
DA - 2017/06/24
PB - ASEE Conferences
TI - Life after University for Engineering Graduates
UR - https://peer.asee.org/28630
DO - 10.18260/1-2--28630
ER -